Saturday
Dec182010
Ready for Christmas?
Saturday, December 18, 2010 
To those readers celebrating Christmas or just anticipating time off from work and school to be together with their family, I thought I would throw together a few posts that you may find helpful while I continue working on my next in-depth post.
Establishing Holiday Traditions
Everyone wants the holidays to be a special time with family. If your family is a new one, you may still be thinking about what traditions you want to establish with your children. These posts may provide some great ideas.
- 5 Ways to Make Your Holidays More Meaningful (Parenting by Nature): Some great tips for building holiday memories with your children without emptying your wallet.
- Christmas: A time for cookies, carols, cookies and conflicting ideals (Arwyn from Raising my Boychick on PhD in Parenting): Last year Arwyn wrote a great Christmas-themed blog post for me while we were away on vacation. Read her thoughts on her love-hate relationship with the season.
- Taking a Child's Perspective on Traditions (Hobo Mama): Be mindful about the holiday traditions that you start with your children. What do you want them to remember as they grow up? This great post has lots of ideas and also links to the other post from the December Carnival of Natural Parenting on the theme of traditions.
- Getting ready for 25 days of Christmas (A peek inside the fishbowl): Andrea plans a 25 days of Christmas set of activities with her family each year and has inspired other local families and bloggers to take part too.
- Twas the night before Christmas: One of the important Christmas traditions in our family passed down from when I was a child.
Dealing with Holiday Stress and with Family
Christmas can be a stressful time because it is so hectic, because it is a change from regular routines, because it is cold outside and there isn't a lot of daylight, and because it often involves visits to or visits from family.
- Beware of Holiday Weaning (The Nurtured Child): If you are a breastfeeding mom, you should be aware that breastfeeding can often be unintentionally disrupted by the excitement and business of the holiday. Take steps to protect your nursing relationship.
- A time to wean? Your opinion, others opinions and how to deal: Whether the issue is breastfeeding, co-sleeping, discipline or something else altogether, when families come together on holidays, they often have opinions about how we should be raising our kids. Here are some tips on surviving the onslaught of unwanted advice.
- How to Cook with a Baby in the House (Cooking Manager): Do you have a little one around the house? Inviting family or friends over for the holidays? If you are stressed about how to get your cooking and baking done with a baby around, check out these great tips.
Help for Last Minute Christmas Gifts
Still not sure what you want to put under the tree on Christmas? Whether you tend towards the homemade, buy from artisans or small businesses, or go for the mainstream stores, these posts may provide a few ideas to help guide you on your way.
- The Gift of Presence (Natural Parents Network): What most children, small children especially, really want for Christmas is time with their parents. This post provides ideas for gifts that focus on spending time with your child.
- Christmas Gifts for Teachers? What to Think of When Buying a Gift: A recent post, but in case you missed it, here are some ideas and tips for getting the right gift for your children's teachers and other important people at their school.
- Non-sexist holiday shopping: Is it possible? How to avoid the gender-pegging of today's toy industry when shopping for your little ones.
- Quelling crazed consumerism: Dealing with the onslaught of "I want this" and "I need that" around holiday time.
- 3 Children's Book Recommendations: These three children's books that we bought recently are not only loved by our children, but also teach them something important about our world.
- The Family Dinner (by Laurie David): I bought this book yesterday because it caught my eye as I was Christmas shopping at the bookstore. It is an absolutely beautiful book - gorgeous layout, pictures and presentation. It is also full of wonderful ideas, traditions and recipes. I'm calling this the foodie's complement to Hold On To Your Kids. A great choices for anyone who loves food and has a family.
- Don't forget to check out some of the great advertisers on this blog! Lots of great small businesses with potential Christmas gifts for your family.
I hope these resources are helpful to you as you prepare for some downtime with your family. Any other ideas? Share them in the comments. Need input on a holiday-related issue? Put your question in the comments and I'm sure my readers and I will have some ideas to help you out.
Image credit: HikingArtist.com on flickr
Reader Comments (5)
Thanks for pulling all of these links together (and thanks for including mine!). :) This year for Christmas we are staying at home for the first time ever in our current house. We've been here for 7 years now, but have never had Christmas at home because we usually travel to stay with family. I'm really looking forward to building Christmas memories and traditions in our own home.
This is great, thanks. I love that the holidays bring out the practical in so many moms.
Thanks for including a link to our blog post (Making your Holidays Meaningful). I also love your Quelling crazed Consumerism post. Such great ideas!
Great ideas! I also wanted to add, along the lines of spending time together, that the kids are giving their Dad a book about how to build a tree house. They are excited about being able to spend time with him next summer out in the backyard. For me, I asked for a book about Geocaching, another great outdoor activity that families can do with their kids.
My partner and the kids started building a treehouse this summer. It is one they can add on to as the years go by.